The Church of the Current Thing
The American left has found a religious home after 50-year window shopping excursion for something that is flexible enough to fit what they want to do.
If you disagree with the spirit of the age, which is decidedly anti-Christian, according to Maine’s Attorney General, Aaron Frey, you are a racist, intolerant bigot. Regarding the recent SCOTUS ruling in Carson v. Makin, he was quoted as saying:
"While parents have the right to send their children to such schools, it is disturbing that the Supreme Court found that parents also have the right to force the public to pay for an education that is fundamentally at odds with values we hold dear. I intend to explore with Governor Mills’ administration and members of the Legislature statutory amendments to address the Court’s decision and ensure that public money is not used to promote discrimination, intolerance, and bigotry."
So, what are the “values we hold dear” with which we seem to always be “fundamentally at odds”?
One hears a flood of references to these “values”, but rarely do we get any specific insight into what people like AG Frey believe the actual values are.
One would assume these are moral or religious values, but which ones?
Certainly not Christian values. Now that he left is in charge, practicing Christians have been in the crosshairs, begin accused of being “Christofascists”, the purveyors of dangerous “Christian Nationalism” and even right-wing domestic terrorists.
I think Christianity tends to draw the most ire because although it has laws very similar to the other major religions, is a “soft” religion, a religion of spiritual conversion, not physical coercion.
Judaism is somewhat less targeted, but Jews are not exempt from the leftist spotlight. Judaism is somewhat off limits due to a resistance to criticize Jews due to the Holocaust - although there seem to be more feeling free to express their antisemitic views and let their freak flag fly these days – even some elected members of Congress.
Of the three “great” religions, Islam is a curious case in America. It is certainly out of bounds to criticize in the way the Judeo-Christian religions are, mostly because it is a very useful club to use against Christians and Jews (charges of islamophobia). Even though the radical wing of this faith is constructed of real discrimination, intolerance, and bigotry – and terrorism – it generally escapes the ire of the American left. For example, in most Islamic countries many of the left’s pet issues are handled with a sword. “Women’s rights” are unknown and in many of those countries, homosexuality is expressly forbidden, often under the penalty of death. But it is useful – an “enemy of my enemy is my friend” sort of thing.
Of course, many of our leftist betters profess membership in Christian, Jewish or Islamic sects – since America is predominantly a Christian nation, many of the ruling elite claim to be Catholic or Jewish, but these professions are largely performative. Pelosi and Biden profess to be “devout” Catholics – and yet are rabid supporters of abortion, something the Catholic Church vehemently opposes. Several members of Congress claim to be observant Muslims, and yet support LGBTQ issues even though Islam forbids homosexuality. The same with Chuck Schumer and the other Jewish members of the left in Congress – they support alliances with countries, like Iran, that want to destroy Israel and wipe the Jewish people off the face of the earth.
So, what religion do these powerful in influential people follow? What are the values they hold dear?
The American left professes to be secular humanists, but in reality, they have been searching for a religion for a very long time. Rather than accept the rules of any traditional religion, they launched a 50-year window shopping excursion for something that is flexible enough to fit what they want to do even if that thing contradicts what was forbidden yesterday.
During the 60’s they looked for anything other than Christianity or Judaism because those two told them things about themselves and their actions they didn’t want to hear. These forbade them to do the things they wanted to do, so they investigated transactional analysis, meditation, LSD, weed and pretty much any storefront version of other religions to find something that fit their wants, needs and desires.
As a substitute for Judeo-Christian theology, they concocted a Frankenstein version of a religion, a toxic mixture of statism, politics, mysticism, and atheism rolled up into a loose ball called “progressivism”.
Progressivism is as much a religion as Catholicism, it just replaces a Pope with government, counting on the senior leadership of the Democrat party to be their High Priests.
Progressivism became a very curious mix of the Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition and the Flagellants, the 13th century group of Roman Catholics who practiced mortification of the flesh by various means. Progressives find pleasure in their self-inflicted pain but really enjoy dosing it out to non-progressives as well.
The most prevalent tenet of this new “religion” appears to be a version of self-loathing misanthropy. John McWhorter, in a post titled “Atonement as Activism” illustrated a common form of this:
“…today’s “woke,” educated white people would quite often lap up being apprised of the racism inside of them by a black speaker they paid, lodged, and fed. That speaker as often as not today is Ta-Nehisi Coates, who charismatically limns America as a cesspool of bigotry in his writing and in talks nationwide and is joyously celebrated for it by the very people he is insulting.”
In my opinion, McWhorter is one of the America’s most underrated African-American intellectuals. He argues that "third wave anti-racism" is a religion he calls "Electism" with white privilege as original sin.
I prefer to call it the Church of the Current Thing because no one really knows the laws and rules of this new religion. They change to fit the need of the moment. What you can say or think and who you can say or think it about changes every minute and what was acceptable yesterday is not acceptable today. You can be right and wrong at the same time. There are no fixed values, values are temporal an exist only when they are useful to advance an agenda.
For me, I don’t need to change my religion to meet my needs, wishes and desires – I need the constancy and consistency of the Gospel to both inform and guide my life. If principles and God’s law is arbitrary and capricious and His teachings malleable and changeable to fit what I want to do, then they are of no use as a guide – they aren’t laws at all…they are merely suggestions.
This is where I part company with many modern Christian theologies – the idea that churches must soften the Gospel to get buts in the seats, that religion is some sort of fad that adapts to contemporary culture, that you can have an atheist as a pastor of priest, that religion must be made “more appealing” to be relevant…I reject it all. Religion, especially Christianity, is not a consumer good that must carry a “New and Improved!” label to be popular. Religion’s sole purpose is to teach people about God. To do so, we are to conform to God’s laws, not try to change them so we can continue to spiral back down into the flawed beings we are.
Anyway, that’s just me. I’m an enemy of progressivism. I might just be a little biased.
As if we haven't been presented with plenty of evidence that we are being forced for "the public to pay for an education that is fundamentally at odds with values we hold dear," at least for some of us, via the public schools! Whose values, and for whom?
In our diverse society, there is going to be no way to have a curriculum that aligns with everyone's values and priorities. What's he's missing here is that the system is set up to tax the people (mostly landowners) to pay to educate our youth. How each parent chooses to allocate those education funds, by choosing the legitimate school of their choice, shouldn't be a concern of his- just like those parents shouldn't be able to dictate who he chooses for his own kids.
I couldn't agree with you more brother.
I found McWhorter a couple of years ago, and he is incredibly sharp and well-spoken. I have tremendous respect for him, though I know we would disagree on many things.
As for church, you hit the nail on the head. We are not to water things down just to please people, but Scripture warns us this will happen, that people will gather around them teachers to tell them what their itching ears long to hear. Really, it goes even beyond that. What most churches call "missions" these days are little more than charity trips that could be performed just as well by secular organizations. I've said for many years that performing charity without sharing the gospel is like paving potholes on the road to hell. The concept obviously being that you're making the ride more comfortable, but the destination remains the same. Paul went out preaching the gospel, and occasionally an opportunity to do something charitable came his way. The modern American "church" has turned that concept in its head.
Similarly, by watering down the gospel to get butts in seats, a la Rick Warren et. al., perhaps you can make people feel better about themselves and their sin (especially if you won't talk about sin - Joel Osteen anyone?), but you're not providing any real or lasting benefit.